Student Confesses to Campus Incident

Posted October 11, 2005 | ATLANTA

A Georgia Tech student has indicated his involvement in an Oct. 10 incident involving a crude bottle explosive found on Tech's east campus. The incident was not in any way the work of a "terrorist" group.

He turned himself in to Georgia Tech police the morning of Oct. 11 and confessed to his involvement. He's facing charges for possession of a destructive device (a felony under Georgia Law) and reckless conduct (a misdemeanor under Georgia law).

The freshman engineering student has been temporarily suspended pending a student judiciary ruling.

The Georgia Tech Police Department and the Atlanta Police Department are still investigating the incident. The contents and exact nature of the bottle explosives have not been determined and are still under investigation.

Around 8:45 a.m. on Oct. 10, during a routine grounds cleaning, a Georgia Tech facilities worker picked up an item believed to be trash in the courtyard between the Glenn and Cloudman residence halls on the southeast side of campus and it exploded.

Campus police were immediately notified, and the two residence halls were evacuated as a safety precaution. Approximately 100 students were evacuated from the two residence halls. Many students were already in class at the time of the event.

Two similar bottle explosives were found in the same area and the Atlanta Police and Fire Departments were called in to assess and contain the situation.

The Atlanta Police Department's bomb squad detonated the remaining two bottle explosives shortly before noon and students were allowed to reenter the residence halls. The facilities worker was taken to a clinic for evaluation and released.

While this incident unfortunately was frightening for many Georgia Tech students and employees, it turned out to be an excellent test of Tech's emergency preparedness program. All emergency response efforts functioned exceedingly well, and Tech has every confidence that would be the case if such an incident occurred in the future.